So what happens in the room? What makes American financing better than an option from China or from Russia? And are we messaging that well enough?

Well, absolutely.

I think, you know, look, part of this is, and I think it's a good opportunity for DFC 101, you know, as Senator Hagerty mentioned, it came about in the first Trump term out of the old OPIC, but really we were created out of our reauthorization last December.

And so now we're a $205 billion organization.

on a six-year re-auth, subtract out our previous commitments, and we're going to be allocating over $30 billion a year.

And that's a huge amount of money, but this is why I say our model is better.

205 is an enormous amount, but it pales in comparison to the $1.5 trillion conservative estimate that is China's Belt and Road Initiative.

Which regions do you think look most promising? And if you could ask Congress for one new tool or authority, what might that be?

Ben, what is the best question a founder or an investor has asked you?

I love the questions when LPs talk to me about long-term.

I think when LPs get into you and really try to understand not just what you're doing today, but what you're building to, that's something that I really like.

It really tells me that there's an LP that I want.

If LPs are just nitpicking me over recent performance or decisions and are very backward looking, I think it gives you a different perspective.

So I really love it when...

when an LP tries to understand what I'm building, what I'm building towards.

The other people you're competing against

like what they do

Ben, if you could share one piece of advice with a young new investor, what would you tell them?

Don't become an investor.

My personal mistake and I see it all the time out there is like super high quality people going into venture without enough operating experience.

I think that I was that myself.

Like I was only an operator for like three years and then I got swooped into venture and not by plan.

I was like an accidental venture capitalist.

Ben, what is the biggest mistake or hardest lesson you've learned as an investor, and what's the story behind it?

I think the biggest lesson I've learned is, is to be nimble about strategies.

You know, I think that my, my original Acadian funds, I really was so focused on, like, I trained my LPs to love, to love discounts.

Like, I, I got to re- develop the reputation, you know, during the, the, the sort of the first ten years of Acadian as being like, "Ben gets great prices," right? I passed on a lot of great companies because it was, they were...

I knew my investors would throw up on the price.

And that, looking back at it, was a, uh, proving over time, like, the, the companies I had access to were amazing, but I co- wouldn't pay the price.

And, and those were the most, that's the most expensive and, uh, and really long-term lesson that I've learned.

I wish I had seen it.

Ben, talk about one of the highest stakes conflicts you've faced as a, as an investor, why the issue occurred, and how it was resolved.

Yeah.

I-- this one I'm-- this one I'll tell you about 'cause it's a long time ago, but it is a great story for anyone that is ever gonna sell a company to private equity, right? So when I was at Mavron, I invested in this...

Basically, I found this deal that I really loved, and, but Mavron didn't wanna do it.

They had their good reasons.

And I was like, I don't know, years s- I was like six years into my career, and actually that was my-- I raised my first personal SPV.

It was my first personal investment in a retail company called Sneaker Villa, 'cause remember, Mavron's a consumer fund.

How much money do you feel like was on the line directionally?

most painful

pass of my life.

And it's one that I still lie in bed, think about all the time.

It was a long time ago.

It was in our third fund.

And I knew NoSQL databases were going to be big.

So you had MongoDB was new, right? And then you had Databricks.

Check your docs.

So where does all of this kind of go from here? Like as in what's the direction of the industry? More retail friendly access or a pullback potentially? And if you were advising someone starting a portfolio today, how would you tell them to think about private markets?

Yeah.

So I think the biggest question that's happening in the next couple of years is, we got to get beyond OpenAI and Anthropic next.

They're the next big sort of story that's overhanging.

And I will tell you, there's an incredible array, in my opinion, of really exciting companies out there that are not as well known by the public.

But that they will be soon.

I mean, just to name a few from our portfolio, Vast Data is one.

How are you thinking about the next generation of AI companies? And I guess the million-dollar question is, are we at the beginning, middle, or end of an AI boom?

So what happens with VC and how do we square the circle here with the long hold?

Well, you know, there's been a lot of writing out there.

Obviously, like, I've written about, like, the fact that the venture capital business is sort of fundamentally different than it used to be, right? And right now we have, you know, the vast majority of capital goes into a small group of firms, and then you have, like, a long tail of 3,000-plus funds that are out there doing seed in early stage.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of concern over what's happening to those managers, because we've been through the most difficult five-year craziness in venture, and there's been a massive amount of creative destruction in early stage.

And the single-stage VCs have been under tremendous pressure with their own models.

I can just tell you that I just got done this morning selecting the top 100 GPs that are going to be invited to raise this year.

So how do you balance, you know, putting the anthropics into power law and then also putting some stuff in there that they may not know what it is? It might be obscure, but it's something that you believe will have tremendous appreciation.